The following are some of the ways to get in touch with each otherged seven or eight, planting onions on his father’s land above Kabak Bay, Fatih Canözü saw his first foreigner. Fatih Canozu’s village, on the jagged coast in the south-west region of Turkey called Lycia, was very remote before the road arrived in 1980. It was isolated by steep mountains and valleys that plunged straight into the sea. His family had to travel two days on donkey trails to reach Fethiye to sell their honey, apricots and vegetables at the market. Despite his shock at seeing the outside world intrude for the first time, Canözü remembers thinking even then that tourism was the future.
Four decades on and having trained as a chef, Canözü has not only built a restaurant and 14 tourist cabins in Kabak, he has married a foreigner too: a former Middle East correspondent from England, who came here to research a novel and ended up falling in love. Now they are raising their family on this wild fringe of Anatolia’s Turquoise Coast, a region that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founding father of the Republic of Turkey, is said to have called the most beautiful in the country.
The Olive Garden is named after the 200 to 300 trees that are planted on a terraced hillside overlooking the sea. Canözü’s father dug them up in the mountains and lugged them here on his back, a testament to the years of hard work it took to make this place. Canözü designed the cabins himself, building them in wood and stone to minimise the environmental footprint. In the place where his family had once threshed grains, he built an infinity swimming pool. In 2005, when the restaurant first opened, he had to wait a nervous 45 days before he saw his first client. Slowly, the people started to come.
My wife and i stay for four nights. First, we sleep in the standard cabin. Then, we move to one of two luxurious cabins with a view of the sea. We spend the majority of our time on the deck, constantly amazed by the view. The room is spacious, with glass and pine. On the far side of the forested valley rise immense limestone walls that mark the southern reaches of the Taurus mountain range – the summit nearby is slightly lower than Ben Nevis. A sliver sand and a shockingly blue sea meet on the beach below. Kabak beach is known for its alternative vibes. It’s a place that hippies, Muslim families, women wearing burkinis, and dogs laying on the sand sunbathe.
This sense of coexistence – something that many see as the heart of modern Turkishness – extends to the marine life: at sunset, half the beach is cleared for nesting loggerhead turtles.
Kabak village is at the end a long road. This, combined with its rugged terrain, has protected it from the overdevelopment that other resorts have suffered.
The Lycian Way is a great place to rest when you are on a long, slow journey. The 470-mile Lycian Way was established by Kate Clow in 1999, a British-Turkish lady who lives here. This world-renowned trail is divided into sections. We first hike along a rocky pathway through strawberry trees and pine forests to reach a nearby waterfall. After a long beach party, some stragglers are landing. We take our plunge while techno is playing. After a few minutes of scrambling, the trail takes us back to wild quiet.
The following morning, I walk two hours to the south while others travel by boat. We then meet at Cennet Koyu – Paradise Bay. This beach is a true paradise, as there are no roads leading to it. The water is so clear, it’s like glass. And the mountains behind are steep and green. It’s as close to a paradise as you can imagine. Up in the forest is one of the “camps” that were founded before gentrified tourism arrived – vaguely piratical travellers’ outposts that keep things reassuringly scruffy. There are dogs, chickens, and donkeys among the trees.
A local with an anchor tattooed in his ear steers us to the ruins of the village around the next peninsula. Its collapsed stone wall and archway, now surrounded by lush greenery, is a testament to a darker history for this stretch of coast. Kalabantia was once inhabited by Greeks, forced to abandon their beautiful home during the brutal “population exchange” that followed the Turkish war of independence in the 1920s. No one came to take their place – it was too remote even for local Turks – so now its stones are sinking back into the land from which they came.
A 45-minute drive away is the much larger settlement of Kayaköy, formerly Levissi, from which over 6,000 Greeks were deported in 1923 to a “homeland” they had never seen. The melancholy ghost city of 500 roofless homes is nearly abandoned except for tourists and roaming goats. The painted stars on the ceilings of its Orthodox churches and Chapels are a sad sight. Strangely, I realise I’ve been here before: under the fictional name Eskibahçe, this was the setting of Louis de Bernières’ novel Birds Without Wings, which describes how nationalism tore apart multicultural communities that had lived side by side under Ottoman rule for centuries.
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The Greek influence is also apparent in Lycia’s most famous ruins: the rock-carved tombs that we saw on our way here from Fethiye. They were made by the ancient Lycians, who blended Hellenic architecture with the Persian technique of hewing structures from the living rock. The smaller tombs are scattered along the Lycian Way and in the mountains. They look like lidded stone caskets.
It is impossible to settle down here. Kabak might still be remote but the road has inevitably brought change, and since the Olive Garden opened, trees have been bulldozed and concrete poured, although the pace of construction has apparently slowed in recent years.
In this time of rising temperatures and increasing visitor numbers, water supply is of great concern. Forest fires are also a major issue. The rest of the world remains largely unchanged. The mountains, forests, and turtles are all still there where the road ends. As in other places where beauty masks a harder existence, there’s a balance to be struck: without tourism – including the hikers slogging along the Lycian Way – many of Kabak’s young people would be forced to move elsewhere instead of working locally, as the Olive Garden’s staff do. Kabak is currently on the right end of this balance.
Our last meal is a feast Imam Bayildi, which translates as “the imam fainted” – presumably because the dish is so good – roasted aubergine stuffed with onions, tomatoes and garlic, drenched in olive oil and smothered with melted cheese. The food has been consistently fresh, local and delicious. The moon shines brightly on the walls that glow like bone. We learned a new term. yakamozThe sparkling moonlight on the dark water is my favorite in Turkish, or any other language. Poems are everywhere in this country. It must be a good culture if they have a word like this.
Standard cabins at Olive Garden Kabak (olivegardenkabak.com) from £70, luxury cabins £120 (both sleep two), breakfast included
